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Friday, April 27, 2012

First stop of the day: the famous La Maison Angelina for their Parisian breakfast set.

The beautiful interior.

We ordered 2 sets of breakfasts.

Glass of fruit juice and of course, the famous hot chocolate!

Assorted pastries.

Various jams and butter to go with the bread!

Angelina is also famous for their Mont Blanc, but I didn't have any space in my stomach left for that, so maybe next time heh.

After a very filling breakfast, we shopped around in the Rue Saint Honore area before going to our next stop. It's fun to walk around there and see all the tourists with giant paper bags from Hermes, Prada, Dior, etc. Hmm someday...

Anyways, we went to Sacre-Coeur next. We intended to take the funicular up to the church, but somehow we missed it completely and ended up climbing all the way up on foot. It wasn't a very long distance but it was pretty hot that day! I mean, it was like 18 degree celsius but I didn't think it would feel that warm so I had brought my coat with me, lugging it around gave me the sweats.

Loads of people sitting on the steps, soaking up the sun. Not me tho, I couldn't wait to get inside, where it's nice and cool, in the shade.

Sacre-Coeur is located on the top of Montmartre, the highest point in the city, so it presents a great view.

A very cool street performer. My mum says a Korean TV show invited him over to perform on the show, how awesome is that?

No pictures of the interior cos no photography is allowed. It's beautiful tho, you'll just have to take my word for it.

And we finally found the goddamned funicular so we took it to get down and back to the train station.

Pretty short ride down lol.

Loot for the day, just a couple of small things:

A new wallet from Miu Miu for me! I've been using my old wallet for like 10 years now, so I figure it's time for a change :3

I really love found footage films, there's a new one coming out, The Chernobyl Diaries, about a group of friends who go on a tour of an abandoned city near the Chernobyl disaster and end up stranded there as night falls when they realize that the bus that took them there has broken down (whatever evil being that is lurking in the ghost town fucked with the car!).

So while waiting for that movie to be released, I decided to check out another found footage movie, Grave Encounters, last night and it was pretty good.

Here's the plot summary:

Lance Preston and the crew of "Grave Encounters", a ghost-hunting
reality television show, are shooting an episode inside the abandoned
Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where unexplained phenomena has been
reported for years. All in the name of good television, they voluntarily
lock themselves inside the building for the night and begin a
paranormal investigation, capturing everything on camera. They quickly
realize that the building is more than just haunted - it is alive - and
it has no intention of ever letting them leave. They find themselves
lost in a labyrinth maze of endless hallways and corridors, terrorized
by the ghosts of the former patients. They soon begin to question their
own sanity, slipping deeper and deeper into the depths of madness,
ultimately discovering the truth behind the hospital's dark past...and
taping what turns out to be their final episode.

So after watching the movie, I couldn't sleep last night. Idk man, the movie did have some pretty good scares but after watching it, I wasn't like scared to be alone in the dark by myself or anything. Then later when I went to bed, I couldn't stop thinking about it, I would fall asleep and then wake up again a few hours later with the movie still in my mind, I even had a dream about the movie (the dream didn't even make any sense so I'm not typing it out here lol). I think it's because it didn't have a conclusive ending.

Like how was the footage found? What happened when the caretaker guy came to unlock the doors at 6.00 am? What did he find? Did he find their equipment all intact but no trace of the crew? Or did he find their bodies there or something? Inquiring minds want to know.

Parts of the movie that creeped me out

It was 2 hours past the time when the caretaker was supposed to come and unlock the doors, and there was no sign of him, and it continued to be dark out.

The crew forced the front door open with the gurney and found more hospital hallways instead of the street. The other side of the door had the 'Death Awaits' graffiti that they saw when they were going in. That was when you knew they had literally no way out and were just basically waiting to killed by one of the spirits.

The guy who was playing the psychic got separated from the rest while they were running away from a ghost and had to find his way back to the group in the dark as he didn't have a torchlight. Through the night vision camera they installed earlier, we see things like doors moving on its own around him and then later he gets choked by an invisible force and then slammed upwards into the ceiling.

The host goes off to look for something to wedge the elevator door open and on his way out of the room he spots a bloody tongue on the floor and a few drops of blood drip down from above, he looks up and sees the camera guy who disappeared earlier crouching on the ceiling like a spider and his mouth was all bloody, damn, that really made me jump.

While the group is arguing a figure sprints across the hall into another room in the background and they run after it thinking it's their friend that disappeared earlier. Instead they find a blond girl in a hospital gown, standing eerily facing the wall, Blair Witch project style. Then she turns around and her face is like this:

OMG you guys don't even go here!

The face kinda spoiled it for me. Yes, it's pretty scary, I mean, I'm having a hard time typing this out as this face stares at me from the screen, but it's also screams bad CGI and that kinda takes you out of the movie. It looks like those scary faces they use in videos on Youtube, usually named 'REAL GHOST CAUGHT ON CAMERA MUST WATCH!!!!' or something. It would probably be better if the crew just freaked the fuck out when they see a ghost girl standing there in the room and run away screaming and the sound of a ghostly howl is heard behind them.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The interior is beautiful and entry is free. It costs money to go to the top of the tower and you have to take the stairs, but since we were going up the Eiffel Tower later, we decided to pass.

Walking around the area near the cathedral...

Ha I didn't know they had this kind of thing here.

Had some delicious ice cream from Berthillon by the banks.

Walked back to Notre Dame to take the train back to the hotel, here's the cathedral at sunset.

After taking a break in the hotel, we went to our last stop for the day, the Eiffel Tower! We had planned to go the day before but were kinda tired after the boat ride and the line to go in was so loooong...

This time there was a slightly shorter line, thankfully, but we still had to queue for about 30 minutes to go in.

Ticket to go all the way to the top!

View from the second level.

View from the top!

It is so worth it to go to the top, it's really high up and the views are just stunning and on a good day, you can see really far. It was definitely the highlight of my trip.

Also, the winds were really strong, if not for the railings, I think many would have been blown off the tower lol. Luckily for us, we were prepared and were wearing extra layers of clothing and brought along our scarves and gloves.